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Iraq Dispatches: Censorship

At long last, the culminating session of the World Tribunal on Iraq isupon us. As a witness providing testimony, like the other witnesses I’mbeing interviewed by many outlets. Today, one of them was by reportersfor one of the larger newspapers in Turkey, the Yeni Safak Newspaper.

I’ll leave the reporters nameless, for reasons you’ll soon see.

The newspaper has been translating various articles of mine into Turkish and running them, particularly those concerning the most recent Fallujah massacre. The report who was interviewing me today told me that theformer American consulate here, Eric Edelman, asked the Prime Ministerof Turkey to pressure his paper to not run so many of my stories.

“Why did he do this,” I asked him.

“Edelman said it was the wrong news,” he told me with a smile.

Turns out Edelman also asked that articles by Robert Fisk and NaomiKlein not be run so often in Yeni Safak either.

He smiled at me while he watched the wheels turning in my head before Ismiled back and said, “That makes me very happy, it means I’m doing myjob as a journalist.”

We laughed heartily together at this, as did everyone else at the table.

So the American government is pressuring foreign countries to censor their news. Aside from the fact that this act is the height of arrogance by the United States, it makes it exceedingly clear why so many Americans who rely on the corporate media for their news continue to beso misinformed/un-informed about the goings on in Iraq. If the American government is attempting to censor the news in foreign countries, you can imagine what they are doing at home.

Because people like Edelman don’t want citizens of the United States to know that events like the massacre of Fallujah or the atrocities in Abu Ghraib are not isolated incidents.

People like Edelman don’t want people to know what one of my sources in Baquba just told me today.

His email reads:

“Near the city of Buhrez, 5 kilometers south of Baquba, two Humvess of American soldiers were destroyed recently. American and Iraqi soldiers came to the city afterwards and cut all the phones, cut the water, cut medicine from arriving in the city and told them that until the peopleof the city bring the “terrorists” to them, the embargo will continue.”

The embargo has been in place now for one week now, and he continued:

“The Americans still won’t anyone or any medicines and supplies into Buhrez, nor will they allow any people in or out. Even the Al-Sadr followers who organized some help for the people in the city (water,food, medicine) are not being allowed into the city. Even journalists cannot enter to publish the news, and the situation there is so bad.

The Americans keep asking for the people in the city to bring them the persons who were in charge of destroying the two Humvees on the other side of the city, but of course the people in the city don’t know who carried out the attack.”

People like Edelman don’t want people to know about the recent US attacks in Al-Qa’im and Haditha either. Attacks that Iraqis are describing as just as bad as the massacre of Fallujah.

On Haditha and Al-Qa’im, an Iraqi doctor sent me this email yesterday:

“Listen…we witnessed crimes in the west area of the country of what the bastards did in Haditha and Al-Qa’im.

It was a crime, a really big crime we have witnessed and filmed in those places and recently also in Fallujah. We need big help in the western area of the country. Ourdoctors need urgent help there.

Please, this is an URGENT humanitarian request from the hospitals in the west of the country. We have big proof on how the American troops destroyed one of our hospitals, how theyburned the whole store of medication of the west area of Iraq and how they killed a patient in the ward…how they prevented us from helping the people in al-Qa’im. This is an URGENT Humanitarian request. The hospitals in the west of Iraq ask for urgent help…we are in a bighumanitarian medical disaster…”

People like Edelman don’t want the public to know that the same tactics used in Fallujah by the US military-posting snipers around the city to shoot anyone who moves, targeting ambulances, impeding medical care, or the detaining of innocent civilians en masse.

After all, Fallujah is the model. Fallujah is our Guernica. And now, Haditha, Al-Qa’im can be added to the list, with Baquba and Buhrez under deconstruction.